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[3] A FOREIGN REVIEW OF AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 479 
boxes bear his name, and are as simple as they are ingenious, easy to 
manage, and inexpensive, and have ina very short time been adopted 
throughout the whole of the United States.® 
A beginning had been made. The States of Maine (1867), New York 
(1868), California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island (1870), Alabama, 
(1871), Ohio and Wisconsin (1873), &c., soon possessed their official pisci- 
cultural service. 
The year 1871 marks an important era in the history of pisciculture 
in the United States; from this year date two institutions, which have 
exercised a very beneficial influence on piscicultural industry through- 
out the entire territory of the Union, viz., The American Fisheulturists’ 
Association, and The United States Fish Commission. 
William Clift, A. S. Collins, Fred. Mather, Dr. J. H. Slack, and Liv- 
ingston Stone, all distinguished pisciculturists, well known by their writ- 
ings and their practical labors, were the founders of the association, which 
has rendered such enormous service by influencing public opinion, and by 
giving a powerful impetus to piscicultural enterprise. 
The useful character of the work accomplished in many States by the 
Fish Commission had not escaped the attention of the Federal Govern- 
ment, which, advised of the decrease of the results of both river and 
sea fisheries in all parts of the Union, did not hesitate to institute inves- 
tigations as to the causes and remedies of this evil. A law passed 
by Congress on the 9th of February, 1871, authorized the appointment 
of a “United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries.” The law 
empowered the President of the Republic to appoint said Commissioner 
with the sanction of the Senate, and stipulated that his services should 
be rendered gratuitously. 
The President appointed to this important position Prof. Spencer F, 
Baird, then Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, well 
known by his valuable works on zoology. No better selection could have 
been made; a vast knowledge, a prodigious capacity for work, great 
perseverance, enlightened zeal, indefatigable activity, a devotedness to 
his purpose bordering on self-denial, such are the eminent qualities which 
Professor Baird has brought to the exercise of those useful and absorb- 
ing duties which have been confided to him, and by the fulfillment of 
which he has justly become entitled to public gratitude, not only in the 
United States, but also in foreign countries benefited by the investiga- 
tions and labors of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries.° 
As soon as Professor Baird was appointed, he began work by conduct- 
ing on the coast of New England for several months during the year 
5A description of these boxes, and of other apparatus employed in America, will be 
found farther on. 
6 We will here only recall the large number of embryonated eggs of various kinds of 
salmonoids (Salmo quinnat, S. fontinalis, S. sebago, Coregonus albus, gc.) which so fre- 
quently and liberally have been sent to France, Germany, England, Austria, the 
Netherlands, Russia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, &c. 
